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Followers
Part of a Series on Strongholds There are a number of time you will attract followers while building or operating your strongholds. Each will provide great opportunities for roleplaying and story-building. Work with your DM to determine how the Follower meets you, what their goals are, why they pledge service to you, and why you would even want them. Followers are a lot of work for the DM to manage, so they should serve some purpose beyond being interesting. Your Follower can be an extra hand to help manage a stronghold while you are away. They can be a valuable ally who accompanies you on your adventures. They can be a love interest or rival, but just remember that without a purpose, they are ultimately a waste of the DM's energy and yours as well. Also keep in mind that Followers do not require maintenance payments. They swear service to you because of your power, your charisma, or something you possess that they desire or want to protect. Retainer Retainers are pseudo-player characters that swear service to one of the players. They function very similar to a player, with a class, levels, and abilities. Unlike players, their motivations are primarily player-dependent and they desire little outside serving the party. They need to be treated well, listened to, and not needlessly thrust into danger. Retainers don't necessarily need to follow the party around, they can simply perform services on their behalf. They often have valuable skills and their dedication to the player character means that they are versatile stand-ins for the player in certain areas. Lieutenants Perhaps the best use for your retainer is to act as your lieutenant who runs the show while you are away from your stronghold. Your lieutenant is a trusted advisor whom you can rely on to do your bidding and carry out your orders. Because they are yours to run, lieutenants let you take Demesne Actions even while you’re off adventuring. You can also play your lieutenant as a PC should your current one die or if you want to focus on two important things at once. Knight Errant If you attract more than one retainer, you now have a team who can travel your demesne righting wrongs, enforcing the law, and otherwise solving the lesser problems you are now too high level, and too important, to deal with personally. Between your PC, your lieutenant, and any knights errant you attract, you could end up with an entire party to yourself to go on adventures with. Types of Retainers Artisan It takes many skilled workers to build a keep or a tower or a theater. Commonly, one of these skilled laborers, impressed with the lord’s demeanor, will offer to serve the lord permanently, becoming a member of their retinue, living in the stronghold or the surrounding village after the rest of the workers return to their towns. Each artisan in the lord’s service either grants the lord some benefit or improves the stronghold in some way. The Alchemist The alchemist is to the wizard as the blacksmith is to the fighter. Closely related disciplines that nonetheless require so much specialized knowledge its functionally impossible to be a master at both. Alchemists are primarily useful for brewing potions, but many are also lore-crafty and well versed in obscure uses for various materials. An alchemist can craft potions, particularly potions of healing, for half-price. The Ambassador The rulers of some nearby culture know about you and your new stronghold and demesne, and they want an alliance. That, of course, may take some time and negotiation, so in the meantime they’ve sent an ambassador! Ambassadors allow you to purchase units from their ancestry as though they were friendly. The Blacksmith A skilled blacksmith is one of the most valued and useful members of any town. Metal is difficult to extract from the ground, almost as difficult to process, and the ability to repair metal or beat it into a new and useful shape is akin to sorcery. Indeed, the blacksmith’s trade secrets are as closely guarded as any wizard’s tome. A blacksmith is a great help when building your stronghold, mostly for the nails. Many stone fortifications benefit from wooden frames to hoist stones or build scaffolding, and these things need lots of nails. The amount of time a smith actually spends on weapons and armor in a normal village can be close to zero. However, if pressed, they can create such objects 50% faster and cheaper. The Colonel The experienced soldier tired of campaigning abroad might retire their post when they hear tell of a new lord or lady with a keep or tower to defend. Like other artisans, captains sometimes come from local villages the heroes saved. More than other artisans, the colonel knows how hard an adventurer’s job is, and respects them. Some see it better to serve you than continue taking abuse from the town council, none of whom have ever lifted a sword. Colonels like serving characters who act rather than deliberate. A colonel can also serve ably as your lieutenant if you haven’t yet rolled a retainer. Your colonel will serve your domain while you adventure, protecting your interests and negotiating on your behalf to the best of their ability. Like all followers, the colonel is loyal, but unlike the others, there’s iron in the glove. With the power and authority to wage war, you may return to find your keep under siege. Its only defense: the strategy and tactics of your colonel. Colonels organize your armies to barracks while on the move. Diminished units under their command recover twice as fast. Colonels also bestow a single Trait of their choice upon any units they command. This Trait must have a cost of 100. The Carpenter You could build a stone keep or castle without the aid of wood scaffolding, but you wouldn’t want to. A woodwright’s frames, blocks and tackle, scaffolding, all help your laborers, making ten men work like fifty. And of course, many of the structures in and around a stronghold are made of or use wood in their walls and frames. A thirty-foot-tall hollow cylinder of stone is a granary. Put some joists, frames, two floors, and some stairs in, and now you’ve got a tower that folk can live in. Carpenters can build siege engines for 50% less and 50% faster than normal. They also allow strongholds to be constructed and improved for 15% less. The Granger Build a stronghold, attract a few farmers, and pretty soon you have a village. That’s how new towns get started. As carpenters harvest the trees around your stronghold, exposing fertile earth, farmers come to work the land. And who leads the farmers but a bailiff, a granger. Grangers bring with them trade, roads, and order. The buildings, shops, and homes we associate with a village begin as a market, temporarily erected by the local farmers at the crossroads by the stronghold. From here they sell their excess production, the taxes of which benefit the lord, which benefits everyone. A granger brings with them a number of farmers, which provide 1d100 gold each season in taxes. The Mason Getting a stronghold built in the first place requires a mason, probably several. It’s perfectly natural for one to stay around after the thing is done and continue in the lord’s service, going from a hired hand to a permanent fixture. Masons decrease the time and cost for building and improving strongholds by 15%. In addition, repairs from sieges are free, as masons can repair strongholds for 250gp worth every workweek. The Miner If you’re lucky enough to place your stronghold near a source of metal or workable stone—which, it turns out, you did if you attract a miner—such as a natural cave or a valley dug by an ancient river, you can extract metal near the surface. An experienced miner can survey the terrain in a moment and tell what kind of rock you’re on, what kind of ore can be found underneath, and how long it will take and costly it will be to extract. They bring with them their own experienced crew and often their families. As many as thirty men and women could be working your mine by the end of the first season. Mines produce a significant amount of commerce and thus taxes, offering 5d100 gp every season. The Sage Every artisan carries with them a long list of skills and traditions that help them craft their wares. But for the sage, knowledge isn’t a means to an end—knowledge is an end unto itself. Each sage is not only an expert in a wide array of obscure subjects, but also part of a large network of fellow sages, scribes, and librarians, a constant and largely secret flow of information going back and forth. Your sage grants you access to the Sage background ability. If your sage doesn’t know the answer to your question, they know where the answer can be found. The Sage can find spell scrolls given a number of seasons times the spell scroll's level. In addition, they can do Downtime: Research on the character's behalf during an extended rest. For every 100gp given to the sage during this period, they learn two pieces of lore, for a maximum of 300gp. The Spy An establishment lets you know what’s going on in the local area. What the other nobles, guilds, churches, and secret societies are up to. Your spy makes it much harder for your enemies and even your allies to know what you’re up to. Every spy increases the DC for agents spying on you by 5. In addition, your spy knows which nearby folk might be interested in signing on to your service. You can roll three times when rolling for a follower, and choose which result to use. By this method you gain some measure of control over whom you recruit. The Tailor A tailor’s job is literally to make you look good. They are experts in fashion and keep up to date on all the latest trends, not just in clothing but also style and taste and manners. Having a tailor in your retinue means you not only look good, but you also know how to act, know better how to create the reactions you’re looking for in your allies and your enemies. Subtle changes to appearance and behavior act as a force multiplier for your natural charisma. Tailors can create a set of tailored fine clothes from any set of fine clothes you give them over the course of a workweek. Such an item, when worn with no armor equipped, changes any roll made for a Charisma check below a 5 into a 5 (before bonuses). 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